I haven’t had any of the examples you give above, but have wrestled with the pervasive advice to get mammograms on the regular, and what seems to be no evidence that they are indicated if you don’t have a family history . . . Figure 2 above is interesting to say the least!
Yes, I also struggle! Even more frustratingly, expert advice varies between the US and other EU countries. It’s also not strictly a binary between “yes screening” and “no screening.” In one of my previous articles I wrote how Pap smears q2 years does not have a solid cost/benefit profile, but stretching them out even a little bit improves it to positive territory
Doug, I'm sorry to hear you guys are battling AMN, best of luck getting through it! Hopefully if the cancer specialist said chemo was not necessary you will simply be adding an extra layer of protection against relapse with the medication. If your wife develops bad side effects or can't tolerate the medication, it might be worth asking your doctors if you could change the plan
It's a great point about the difficult sorting out individual vs group outcomes in these studies. Because there is no way to tell if someone will be one of the lucky ones who catches it early and survives longer, or one of the unlucky ones who gets a perf'ed colon and dies during screening, we have to average it all out and see. From this paper, I would probably be good with sigmoidoscopy for colon cancer when I hit the age recommendation, but I would probably probe my doctor more for their logic and other study data if they recommended some of the tests that don't appear to help.
I haven’t had any of the examples you give above, but have wrestled with the pervasive advice to get mammograms on the regular, and what seems to be no evidence that they are indicated if you don’t have a family history . . . Figure 2 above is interesting to say the least!
Yes, I also struggle! Even more frustratingly, expert advice varies between the US and other EU countries. It’s also not strictly a binary between “yes screening” and “no screening.” In one of my previous articles I wrote how Pap smears q2 years does not have a solid cost/benefit profile, but stretching them out even a little bit improves it to positive territory
Doug, I'm sorry to hear you guys are battling AMN, best of luck getting through it! Hopefully if the cancer specialist said chemo was not necessary you will simply be adding an extra layer of protection against relapse with the medication. If your wife develops bad side effects or can't tolerate the medication, it might be worth asking your doctors if you could change the plan
It's a great point about the difficult sorting out individual vs group outcomes in these studies. Because there is no way to tell if someone will be one of the lucky ones who catches it early and survives longer, or one of the unlucky ones who gets a perf'ed colon and dies during screening, we have to average it all out and see. From this paper, I would probably be good with sigmoidoscopy for colon cancer when I hit the age recommendation, but I would probably probe my doctor more for their logic and other study data if they recommended some of the tests that don't appear to help.